


Go/Stop

by circlemarriesline



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: F/F, Nicole doesn't camp, She glamps, Trains can be romantic I guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-07-16 23:07:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7288330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/circlemarriesline/pseuds/circlemarriesline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU in which Nicole and Waverly meet by chance on a train and their plans change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A ficlet that got a little too big for its britches, apparently. Enjoy! 
> 
> "What is the one most important thing our society needs?"  
> "That would be harsher penalties for parole violators, Stan."  
> [crowd is silent]  
> "And more WayHaught fic!"  
> [crowd goes wild]

Nicole said quick goodbyes to everyone milling around in the green room and gathered her belongings as efficiently as possible.

Her bandmates and some friends of friends were headed to a party in the east end and urged her to join them.  
“Nah, I’m gonna pass,” she said, zipping her backpack and slinging it over her shoulder, “I have brunch with my parents tomorrow morning.” 

That was a lie. 

All she wanted was a free night, a gimme to test her newfound liberation from the constraints of academia and all the bullshit she’d put up with to make money playing music this year. Her body craved night air, coffee, catching the sunrise from a new place, and the company of people who didn’t know her. Tonight was for her, and her alone.

“I can’t deal with people right now,” was the phrase she used when she felt like this. Once, in her third year, Nicole had dropped everything on a Wednesday afternoon and boarded a train headed east with nothing but what she’d packed for class that morning. When she was a kid, her coping mechanism of choice for arguing with her parents was packing her tiny suitcase with farm animals on it and threatening to run away. She filled notebooks and bookmark folders with travel plans that remained mostly unfulfilled, but she convinced herself it was because of her schedule. Sometimes she would buy a road map for a city on the coast and mark her route in highlighter, even though she didn’t have a car. It just so happened that her most consistent personality trait was the desire for freedom.

Bursting through the stage door to a small side street with her guitar case in tow, Nicole felt invincible. The first week of summer had rode in on a heatwave this year and she was revelling in it, especially tonight. The humidity clung to her already-sweaty skin just like her t-shirt stuck to her shoulder blades and the small of her back. She felt like a superhero who had just returned from vanquishing the forces of evil. Whoever said performing was a drug knew what they were talking about. She was riding high on adrenaline and comped beer, pheromones and compliments, and wanted to keep moving for as long and as far as her feet and public transit could carry her.

She turned onto the main drag. The street was alive with a gallery opening party across the street, shows wrapping up at venues large and small, and cyclists taking advantage of the lack of traffic so late at night. That hum of activity in the nocturnal world gave rise to some emotion in Nicole. So much life and joy was getting injected into space at that very moment, but most people weren’t awake to see it. She considered the unfortunate realities of growing up for a brief moment until the honk of a streetcar jolted her back.

Half an hour of walking and she could see the gentle arc of the train station ahead, hugging the curve of the street and reflecting its pillars in the glass of the adjacent hotel. Inside, vaulted cathedral ceiling made her feel minuscule against the empty space above her and the collective memories of a century’s worth of travellers. Ah, the centre of the universe. She headed to the staircase leading to the lower level.

Downstairs, the local train service was running its last few trips for the night. Track assignments flashed on the mounted televisions and Nicole found her route of choice. West felt good. It was boarding on track twenty-seven. She tapped her transit card on the electronic terminal and it beeped back at her in confirmation.

Around a few corners and up another set of stairs. For once, no need to jostle for position. She could see the tops of skyscrapers reaching up into the stars from the open air platform. A small step over the gap brought her feet from concrete to industrial carpet. The entire upper level of the car was empty and she settled into a pod of four seats with her forehead against the glass. It began to cool the fire that chased her from the city. A woman’s voice came over the speakers and reminded her which direction she was headed. Departing now. All station stops.

With a lurch, she was moving. Lights whizzed by outside and created the illusion of an extended exposure photo. She caught glimpses of cheeky billboards, glass condominiums springing from the ground like blades of grass at different stages of growth, and the inky lake splayed at the foot of the sprawling metropolis. 

She closed her eyes and let her mind wander while the last remnants of her adrenaline high dissipated.

———

“Hey,” said a breezy voice from across the aisle. “Rockstar. I didn’t know this train had an open mic night.”  
Nicole stirred, but the rhythmic rocking of the commuter train had lulled her into a sleepy daze.  
“Hey,” said the voice, closer now. Nicole felt a small hand touch her arm and she cracked an eye open to find the cutest world traveller she’d ever seen. 

This girl couldn’t have been taller than 5’4” and was loaded down with a camping pack that looked to weigh more than she did. Black athletic shorts wrapped around tanned legs peppered with scratches and bruises, and a sky blue tank top hung loosely around a wiry frame. Her almost hip-length hair was knotted in a tired braid that fell down her front, joined by the countless backpack straps and pulls dangling freely. Nicole guessed she was probably around her age. She regretted not opening her eyes earlier. She was breathtaking, though looked thoroughly exhausted.

“Um, hi,” she said groggily, trying to regain her bearings. “What stop are we at?”  
“Just passed Port Credit,” the girl said, “I didn’t know if you planned on sleeping here all night or what, but leaving you for the transit people felt mean.” Her eyes swept across Nicole’s guitar case, backpack, and down over her denim-clad legs extended onto the seat in front her.

Nicole laughed. “Thanks, I’m much preferring waking up to you than them.” She looked up to find a look of amusement on the other girl’s face. “I mean, you’re much more—” she struggled to clarify, “they don’t really…this is way better.” She moved her bag from the seat beside her and gestured to it. “Want to sit?” she asked. “I’m Nicole by the way.”  
“Waverly.”  
They shook hands and appraised each other for a moment until Waverly broke away to put down her pack.

“Coming or going?” Nicole asked.  
“Depends on your perspective,” Waverly said whimsically, tugging a sweater from under the top flap and pulling it over her head. It smelled like campfire.  
“Okay, touché,” said Nicole. “From my perspective, then. Where are you in your travels?”  
Waverly sat down, brought her knees to her chest and curled into the seat.  
“I just spent three weeks in the wilderness, basically. Camped most of the time, rented a kayak for a little while and explored some interior lakes.”  
“The interior of what?” Nicole was never really a wilderness person. She felt the need to clarify the point. “I went camping a handful of times as a kid, but we never went anywhere that didn’t have flush toilets and a full shower. And a grocery store nearby.”

To Nicole’s surprise, her new friend didn’t seem phased by her novice camper status.  
“Hey, to each their own. My parents didn’t love roughing it, either. Shitting in a hole in the ground isn’t for everybody. Not really sure where I got that gene from, but I definitely got it.”  
Nicole howled with laughter at the imagery, at which Waverly blushed a deep crimson.  
“Oh my god, I just talked to you about poop and we just met.” She looked horrified.  
Nicole was endlessly charmed by girls with potty mouths, and she put a hand on Waverly’s arm in a display of comfort.  
“No no no no don’t worry, it’s cool. I shit behind a dumpster in Montreal once,” she said. “See? We’re even.”  
It was Waverly’s turn to cackle wildly.  
“You did not,” she said with disbelief.  
“One hundred percent true story,” Nicole said earnestly. “In my defence, it was the middle of the night, stores weren’t open, and I was very drunk.”  
“I just reached a whole new level of respect for you,” Waverly joked. “Very impressive.” Her eyes sparkled under the severe train lighting.  
Nicole felt a flush creep up her neck from beneath her black t-shirt.  
“Thanks,” she said. She smiled but couldn’t bring herself to meet Waverly’s gaze directly.

After an extended beat of silence, Nicole returned to her original question.  
“So where were you camping?”  
“Oh right, it was Algonquin,” said Waverly. “I’ll never get sick of that place.” She unfurled herself and pulled a black notebook from the front zippered pocket of her pack, and began flipping through it. Stickers, patches, brochures, and other travel paraphernalia filled countless pages. 

“This one’s from a trail I hiked last year,” she said, pointing to a worn brown and white information booklet. “It takes you through where the old logging railway used to be. Even though it only went out of service, like, eighty years ago, in most places you can’t even tell there was ever anything there. Not to mention it’s totally wild that they could even lay track on that sort of terrain.”  
She flipped to a different page with a couple of pictures on it. “The lookout from the top of this one is really cool. Takes forever to get there, but the view’s worth it.” She pointed to a photo from high atop a cliff looking down to a thick carpet of trees and a river gorge below. “That one’s from 2014, it’s my favourite.”  
“Wow, that doesn’t even look real.”  
“Felt pretty real climbing it. You’d be totally grossed out at how much trail mix I ingested that day.” She shook her head. “Good thing I didn’t have to share, it would’ve gotten ugly. Hungry Waverly is no fun to be around.”

They shared a laugh at that, too. As much as Nicole wanted to hear every story about Hungry Waverly in existence, a detail hung stuck about what she’d just heard.  
“You didn’t do all these trips alone, did you?” she asked.  
“Some of them,” said Waverly. “Others I did with a friend or two.”  
“Shit, you just go out into nature alone? That terrifies me.” She thought for a second. “What about bears and stuff? What do you even do out there other than climb shit? Read? Books are probably too bulky to carry around, right? I would just be trying not to die the whole time…”  
Waverly’s grin lit up the entire car. Nicole stopped to admire it.

“That’s…you’re…incredible,” she said, and met Waverly’s gaze. She was concerned she would float right out of her seat if they held eye contact any longer so she redirected the conversation.

“Where are you headed now? Another leg of your trip?” she asked, transfixed by this little fireball of a human beside her.  
“Home for a bit,” said Waverly, “but I haven’t told anyone I’m coming yet.” She grimaced with embarrassment.  
“You’re just gonna show up in the middle of the night?”  
“Maybe? I don’t know. I just…I always get so tied to my trips. The wilderness makes me feel so alive, like the way the daily grind never could. It makes me never want to come back, you know?”  
Nicole nodded. “I get that. It’s how playing music used to make me feel,” she lamented.

Waverly studied her and continued.  
“I always have this little hope that some other adventure will come up before I get home and I’ll just go do that instead. If I say I’m coming, I’m committing to an end.” Nicole saw a flash of sadness and wondered what she was avoiding going home to.  
“It’s like being in a protective bubble, right? Real life doesn’t really exist in there.”  
“Exactly.” Waverly nodded in the direction of Nicole’s guitar. “What’s the story here? Music doesn’t make you feel alive anymore, but here you are, still doing it. Why?”

Nicole sighed. “It’s tough to pin down sometimes,” she said. “I played a gig tonight with my band, maybe the best show we’ve ever had. I wasn’t expecting that.” She looked down at her hands. “We’ve had some issues the last little while, some tension. It’s kinda my fault.”  
“What happened?”  
“Long story,” she said, wondering where to begin.  
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t w—”  
“No, I want to. You’re the first person I’ve really talked about it with,” said Nicole. “It’s been tough because anyone I really want to tell has a stake in it already.”  
“That must be hard.”  
“Totally, yeah,” she said, trying to play it cool. 

“So last year,” she said, “we were featured on this list of bands to watch, just in this little alternative magazine. It was pretty cool, and we started to actually book some decent gigs and make some money.”  
Waverly’s eyebrows rose.  
“Wow,” she said, “you guys must be good.”  
Nicole shrugged, but a small smile reached her lips.  
“We’re okay,” she said sheepishly. “Anyway, we were doing pretty well, our original stuff was sounding good, we even had some interest from a local record label, but I kinda blew it for us.”  
“I’m sure it wasn’t all your fault. Lay it on me.”  
“My best friend, our lead vocalist, we’ve been best friend since kindergarten.” She hesitated. “And I was in love with her for pretty much as long as I can remember.”

She let her words land before going on. Waverly looked concerned but didn’t say anything.  
“For some reason, I thought it was a good idea to tell her while we were in the middle of everything.”  
“Probably not the best choice,” quipped Waverly, relieving some of the tension.  
“Probably not, in hindsight,” Nicole laughed. “I don’t know, maybe I thought I could have it all. Dream girl, dream job, dream life.” She was making fun of herself. Waverly offered a smirk that stirred something in Nicole.

“Needless to say, the feeling was not mutual and things got awkward between us,” Nicole explained. “She didn’t really know how to be around me after that and I, well, I wanted to run away and never come back,” she said, waving a hand for emphasis.

Waverly looked her square in the face.  
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “That must have been awful.”  
“Yeah, it was, you know? We stopped talking, and when we did it was all business,” said Nicole. “But we tried to keep playing. It was all we had left between us, and it had turned into our livelihood a little bit. If I walked away, the whole group suffered.”

“You said tonight was better. Why?” asked Waverly. Nicole lightened at her attentiveness.  
“It was bizarre. We got on stage and it was like we were playing our goodbyes to each other. We haven’t had that much chemistry in months. It felt like a bookend or something.”  
Waverly’s eyes softened as Nicole continued.  
“I need space from it all. From her. I think she knows that.”  
“What will you do instead?” 

Nicole looked out the window. The voice overhead announced the second last stop on the route.

“Play for fun again, maybe get a real job,” she said. “I just finished school so things are a little up in the air right now.”  
“Plus the job market is shit,” said Waverly.  
“Wow, thanks for the support,” joked Nicole.  
“I’m just trying to keep things realistic for you, okay? You’re probably not going to fall ass-backwards into your career or whatever.”  
Nicole looked at her, astounded.  
“How do you know?”  
“I know stuff,” she said playfully, “plus I haven’t fallen ass-backwards into anything but a thorny shrub in the last little while, so if that’s _my_ post-grad experience…”  
Nicole couldn’t believe her ears.  
“Wow, thanks for the imagery, great.” She felt Waverly’s belly laugh reverberate through their adjoining seats, much to her pleasure.  
“Any time.”

Silence fell between for the first time. Nicole checked her phone and tried to recognise some dark landmarks through the glare on the inside of the window. She thought she could feel Waverly shift in her seat.

After a few minutes passed, Nicole threw a quick glance over to her right, only to find Waverly already looking back at her. They locked eyes and Nicole’s blood thundered in her ears. She couldn’t tell if Waverly had leaned in closer — it felt like it. She was still sitting with her knees up, but sideways to look at her while they talked. 

“Nicole,” said Waverly softly.  
“Yeah?”  
“Can I — would it be okay if we —” she definitely leaned in this time, now hovering just inches from Nicole’s face. Nicole saw her pupils dilate. Waverly had let the hand that had been supporting her chin fall gently on Nicole’s thigh. Nicole reached out and followed the soft rope of hair up to where it disappeared behind Waverly’s neck, then brushed her fingertips on the skin she found there. She heard Waverly’s breath catch.  
“I would like that,” she breathed back.

They explored each other’s mouths, hair, and skin. Nicole nearly crumbled when a soft moan fell into her mouth. Waverly’s slightly calloused hands against her cheeks set her aflame. They kissed tenderly, but with urgency, like they’d soon be worlds away.

The overhead voice announced the final stop.

They broke apart, eyes shining for each other. Nicole could only stare in awe at the vision in a hoodie before her.

“Why did you talk to me?” she asked.  
Waverly thought about it for a second. She playfully squinted at Nicole.  
“You seemed special. I don’t know, there’s something about you.”  
Nicole laughed and her eyebrows danced on her forehead.  
“There’s something about you, too. I feel like we’ve met before,” she said.  
“In a different life, maybe. And for the record, I don’t normally make a habit of waking people up on the train.”  
“I’m glad you did,” said Nicole.  
“Me, too,” said Waverly.

Again, they were reduced to examining each other in silence.

“This is gonna sound crazy,” warned Nicole, “but I don’t have anywhere to be for the rest of the week.”  
“Me neither.”  
Nicole felt like Waverly was anticipating her next words.  
“Do you want to — how do you feel about extending your trip?”  
Nicole’s heart fluttered at the unadulterated joy beaming from Waverly’s face.  
“I missed my stop half an hour ago.”


	2. Chapter 2

The train arrived at its final destination and had since departed by the time Waverly and Nicole purchased their next set of tickets and made their way to the bus connection area. The two cast vastly different shadows under the yellow glow of light standards: one tall with a backpack slung over her shoulder, leaning against a hard guitar case tipped on its end; the other, small, slender, and weighed down by a bulky hiking pack that rose high over her head, but they wore twin expressions of wonderment that showed no signs of soon being extinguished.

Nicole couldn’t help but feel like Waverly’s eyes held whole worlds in them and she was beginning to think she’d shrivel up and blow away without peering into their depths on a regular basis. She likened the experience to opening a new book to the middle and reading a few riveting pages, only to be left not knowing how the story began or what happens next. Torturous, confusing, and altogether heart-wrenching, she thought, especially if the book was a person - and if that person happened to be totally disarming, astounding in every possible way, and an excellent kisser. 

“I’m _so_ toast,” Nicole mumbled to the sky through a smile, absent from reality.  
“What?”  
“Uh, I—” She considered bluffing and tried to formulate a cover on the fly. “I was just looking at the thing and…” she clumsily pointed up at the departures screen then back down to the ticket in her hand and realised she had nothing. “Nothing, forget it.” Her cheeks flushed pink.  
Waverly could only look up at her questioningly.  
“You okay?” she asked. Nicole looked away and chuckled to herself.  
“Yeah, everything’s fine. You just…” she breathed in deeply and let her next phrase fall out in the exhale. “I just don’t know how you’re even real and somehow I completely trust you and it’s freaking me out.” She let her words settle, but when she opened her mouth to elaborate, Waverly interjected. 

“You make me so nervous, I don’t know what to do with my hands so I end up pulling on all of these straps and I don’t even know where they all lead to, and when I think about what I thought I was going to do when I got home it definitely wasn’t this but now I can’t imagine _not_ doing this, you know?” she said in a single breath. She stepped forward and reached out to fiddle with a button on the side of Nicole’s bag that read “straight as a crop circle” with an alien head in the middle. Quieter, she continued. “And your lips look so soft, _I know they’re soft_ , and it’s taking everything I have not to just—”

Nicole had pulled Waverly close and the two were nose to nose. Waverly looked up and Nicole down with the reflection of their combined desire in her eyes. They both breathed heavily into the space between them. The terminal was empty; it was theirs alone. Nicole swore she could feel Waverly’s pulse pounding through where she had grabbed fistfuls of sweater, but maybe it was her own.

“— kiss you,” Waverly finished in a whisper.

“Why don’t you?”  
Waverly scuffed her shoe along the asphalt and crinkled her nose.  
“I can’t really reach too well,” she admitted, “unless I, you know, _jump_.”  
“I can handle it,” Nicole replied with a cocky grin and she reached out to unclip the buckles across Waverly’s waist and chest to release her pack. Waverly let it slide off her body and onto the ground.

Nicole tipped Waverly’s chin up toward her. She felt hands at her hips, sliding upward, one hooked into a front belt loop to pull her closer, another catching the bottom of her shirt and navigating north. She was breathless before their lips ever touched.

———

They boarded the last bus with one other poor soul traveling southwest in the middle of the night, and sat four or five rows from the back devising their plan for the week starting with the campsite Waverly had booked online.

“Okay, I know you’re a pro, but how are we actually gonna do this?” Nicole asked, now increasingly aware of her unpreparedness after digging through her bag in futility for a tissue, though the prospect of _appearing_ helpless concerned her more than actually being unprepared. She boarded a train with nothing but her guitar, a backpack full of old receipts, a water bottle, a phone charger, and a couple of Chapsticks earlier that night, after all. If they were going to venture into the wilds together, she wanted to appear at least somewhat competent.  
“I don’t have any gear, no clothes, your tent is-“  
“Technically built for two,” said Waverly in her singsong voice. “We can stop somewhere and pick up some essentials if you want.”  
Nicole nodded. “Underwear is definitely essential. And a pair of pants that aren’t,” she looked down at her tight black jeans, “these.”  
Waverly, who had perched herself on the seat next to Nicole, extracted a notepad from her bag and began scribbling furiously.  
“Undies, toothbrush, pair of shorts, couple of pairs of socks,” she glanced up and surveyed Nicole’s pale complexion through the darkened cabin for a moment. “And a hat.” She cocked her head. “Just curious,” she said through a poorly disguised smirk, “when was the last time you went outside?”  Before Nicole could formulate a retort, Waverly had blown through to another round of inventory-related questions and she was left feeling windswept, as though she had been tossed about on the bow of a ship - the HMS Waverly. 

Quiet fell over them eventually while the bus rocked and rumbled down the highway. Waverly had laid her head on Nicole’s shoulder and they both watched the cityscape fade into darkened countryside. Nicole felt the steady rise as fall of Waverly’s chest against her side and she was sure she was asleep, until a particularly vicious pothole bounced them out of their seats. After resettling, Waverly’s gentle touch on her forearm reminded Nicole that she hadn’t fallen back to sleep. 

“Why do you travel?” Nicole asked after a few minutes of silence.  
“What?”  
“What the draw, what’s pulling you into nature like this?”  
Waverly adjusted herself in her seat to face Nicole, but she cast her eyes down, eyebrows furrowed, and she fiddled with some of the loose threads hanging from a rip in the knee of Nicole’s jeans.  
“If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay, too. You have veto power.”  
“No, it’s okay, you just - it’s such an important part of my life and,” the corners of her mouth turned up, “nobody’s ever asked me that before.”  
“You have the floor.”  
Waverly drew a breath and fixed her eyes on Nicole.  
“At first I just really liked the outdoors. We’d always go camping as kids, nothing super wild, but I loved being unplugged from reality like that. Well,” she corrected herself, “I loved that my parents were more present. Made me feel like we were…normal or something. For a while.”  
Nicole took Waverly’s hand and remained silent.

“Then my mom left and shit sort of hit the fan with my dad and my sisters, so we stopped going, but…I don’t know. It reminds me of where I’m from.”  
“The suburbs?”  
“No, I mean, like,” she waved her free hand upward, “ _cosmically_. We’re all made from the same stuff, you know? You and me, trees, lakes, the air we breathe, the sky we sleep under, the stars we see at night. Getting to live in the middle of all it and see it in this pure form…I feel like a daisy on the side of a mountain or something. Totally at the mercy of nature, but thriving anyway.” 

Nicole’s mouth gaped ever so slightly at the weight of Waverly’s words.  
“So you’re a believer in the ‘we’re all stardust’ idea?”  
“Kind of, but not because I think the sun is my sister or anything. It's more about knowing that we’re the same as our environment on a fundamental, chemical level. Putting my feet in a lake fulfils this need to connect with an extension of myself.”  
“Oh,” she whispered, awestruck. “You really are a child of nature, aren’t you?”  
Waverly's face broke into a wide grin and she leaned her temple against the headrest.  
“Completely.”  
“You’re gonna have to teach me a thing or two, because I’m kinda scared I won’t survive in the wilderness,” Nicole said into her palms. “I’m so not in my element, Wave.”  
She felt a hand land softly in her hair near her temple and gently comb it through; the intimacy surpassed much of what they had shared to that point, and she leaned into it, dropping her hands.  
“You know what I am?” Waverly asked.  
“You’re a lot of things.”  
“I’m a planner,” she said with sparkling eyes. “Prepared for anything, including a guest, apparently.” Nicole took note of the way Waverly’s body lilted to one side when she determined to make a point.  
“And you know what else I am?”  
“Infuriatingly cute?” asked Nicole. Waverly’s warm laugh washed over her.  
“Maybe,” she replied, pointing a finger at Nicole, “but I’m also an excellent packer. See this bag?” Nicole’s eyes tracked over to the bear-sized camping pack taking up the two seats across the aisle from them. “Some clothes, basic supplies, and everything you could ever need in case of emergency.” She grinned again. “And Bananagrams.”

Nicole would spend the rest of the week clad in slightly dirt-rubbed t-shirts and Waverly’s campfire-scented hoodie, a size too small; she didn’t mind. Her ivory skin became golden, but only after it faded from a particularly angry shade of lobster after their first trek along an exposed lakeside trail. Again, Nicole didn’t mind. Waverly had insisted on helping to apply aloe vera to her shoulders and back, to which Nicole happily submitted. The goosebumps that arose weren’t just a product of the gel being touched by night air, either.

———

Another bus, a tourist shuttle, and a ride from a friend of a friend later, Waverly and Nicole arrived at the gate of the provincial park. Nicole took a deep breath in and closed her eyes. She remained in a state of disbelief that she was actually here. With a girl she just met. And they were about to go camping, of all things. 

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Nicole said through an amused sigh and slightly drooping eyelids. She looked over at Waverly, whose smile was wider than the expanse of forest before them; she couldn’t help but let go some of her hesitation. Maybe this trip would end with some of their mementos stuck to the pages of Waverly’s notebook. Maybe Waverly would thumb through them and be transported to this moment, its anticipation, the two of them standing on the cusp of…something, whatever this was. Maybe they would revisit their first pages in the notebook with fondness and continue to flip through the dozens of entries that followed. Maybe. 

They stood at the gate with their gear piled at their feet, the tree line painting a green stripe across the landscape and the sky reaching high toward the afternoon sun. 

 “Ready?”  
“Ready.”

Checking in at the park office only took a matter of minutes, despite Nicole’s insistence on asking the (very cute) warden about the likelihood of running into bears (and coyotes, badgers, rabid squirrels, deer, and beavers) while they were there.  
“Nope, you’re pretty much the only big game around,” she replied, “except for Bigfoot. He’ll steal your snacks if you’re not careful.”  
“Don’t tell her that,” Waverly joked, “or she’ll be gone before you can say Fox Mulder.”  
“Not much of a camper, huh?” the warden (Kennedy, according to the stitching on the front of her uniform) asked of Nicole, to which Nicole grimaced and shook her head.  
“Looks like you’re in safe hands. Here are your permits, and here,” she pulled a map from under the desk, “are your directions.” She traced their route out to the campsite with blue marker. “We’re here,” she said, drawing a circle around the gatehouse, “and your site is over here.” Another blue circle, this time with two eyes and a smiling mouth. “It’s a bit of a hike to get to, but you’ll love the view from the peninsula, especially the sunset.” A winding line weaved through the park to their destination. “Any other questions, wildlife-related or otherwise?”  
“I think we’re set,” said Waverly. She folded the permits and slid them into one of the side pouches of Nicole’s new backpack, filled with essentials and weighed down by her guitar case strapped to the back, and patted it for good measure.  
“Great, then that’s that. If you need firewood or anything, you can pick some up from Jerry around back. Tell him I said you could have two for one and a bag of kindling on the house. Have fun out there.” She winked and retreated to the back office.

The pair traipsed along their assigned path, both bear-hugging a bag of firewood and with Nicole attempting to crack Waverly up with jokes about wood. She was succeeding.  
“I _wood_ never have expected this,” began Nicole.  
“That was such a gimme, Nic, like, did you even try?”  
“I was just warming up, no need to be such a _birch_ about it.”  
Waverly groaned so loudly that birds fled a nearby tree.  
“What? I excel at this, so _sumac_.”  
“Is this really what I signed up for? Endless wood puns? What ever happened to that sweet, earnest musician I met on the train?”  
Nicole looked over at her with a sparkle in her eye.  
“She definitely _pined_ for you, but I think you’ll like this version of her just as much. Everything about her’s the same, only she’s way more _poplar_. You know, the _spruced-up_ version—”  
“Oh my god.” Waverly hip-checked her playfully.  
“You’re gonna have to do better than that to knock me off my game. Better _branch_ out.”  
_”Nicole,”_ she laugh-whispered, “I’m gonna drop all of this and it’ll be your fault.”  
“Then you better shut me up!”  
“Watch out or you’ll get your ash kicked later…”  
Nicole howled with laughter into the canopy above and another small flock of birds left their perches in a rush. 

They arrived at their site with burning forearms and assorted scratches from adjusting the splintered logs against their bodies, but their spirits were high.

“It’s not so bad! I feel like a woman of nature - I’m in touch with the earth!” Nicole bent down and closed her fist around a handful of dirt and pine needles.  
Waverly unfurled the tent from its nylon bag. “Don’t get cocky, now,” she said without looking, “this isn’t really camping. It’s more like…glamping.”  
“Glamping. Really.” Nicole squinted over at Waverly. “Why do I feel like you’re making fun of me?”  
“I mean, I’m not _not_ making fun of you, for the record, but you have toilets and running water at your disposal. This ain’t the backcountry - I think our neighbours have Toaster Streudel.”  
“It’s the furthest back in this country I’ve ever been, with or without the source of Gretchen Weiners’ inherited fortune, so…”  
“You’re very brave; you’ll probably have a Coast Guard ship named after you,” Waverly chided. Nicole couldn’t help but laugh.  
“I know, I’m a total baby. I’m coming to terms with it.”  
“Okay, Bear Grylls, if you’re ready for your first survival lesson, let’s do this tent.” 

They spent the next four days exploring the park and its nearby trails, cliffs, and lakes, and fell into a routine each time they reached a peak or a particularly spectacular lookout: Nicole would drape her arms around Waverly from behind and hug her tightly, and Waverly would snap a picture of them with their view in the background. 

There are twelve nearly identical photos on Waverly’s phone, one for each of the ten points of interest they visited, one of them perched on a rock during a particularly spectacular sunrise on the third morning, and one at the train station when they parted, tear-streaked faces and all.

All twelve made it into her notebook.


End file.
